Books Come Before Basketball For Boys Of Beasley

December 22, 1991|By H.G. Bissinger.

With a whistle poised in his side pocket, Tom Green prowls the edge of the gym floor. He verbally pokes and prods. He stares. He smiles. He praises. He teases. His voice rises, but without the terrifying grate that can make the walls shake and the paint peel.

Fourteen young boys, dressed in T-shirts lit up with Bulls and Raiders, knee-length gym shorts and loose and floppy gym shoes that seem almost as big as they are, respond with the symmetry of a Broadway chorus line.

They work on outlet passing drills, then two-on-one drills. They run through offensive plays, the brown set, then the green one, then the red one, then the blue one. Coach Green, wearing khaki pants and a white sports shirt, with a stomach quietly approaching that point where he could play Santa Claus at the school Christmas party without any props, continues to look, and listen, and offer comment.

Most of the time this particular group, from the Beasley Academic Center, a public elementary school at 52nd and State Streets that sits under the relentless glare of the Robert Taylor Homes, knows how to ``play big`` quite well. Under Green, a coach who, contrary to the basic creed of his profession, seems to enjoy laughing much more than he enjoys yelling, Beasley has a record of 366 wins and 82 losses over the past nine years.

In a city that is basketball-mad all the way down to the elementary school level, the Boys of Beasley clearly have a certain mystique.

To the other teams that play against them, and often lose to them, they are known as the wimps, the eggheads, the cream puffs who would be better off figuring out the circumference of a basketball than dribbling one, not the Boys of Beasley at all, more like the Bookworms.

To the 46-year-old Green, who is a counselor at the school and coaches on a voluntary basis without any extra pay, such talk is sweet music to the ears. ``There`s a truckload of kids out there who are better than us,`` he said under the watchful shadow of a sign in the school hallway that reads, All Bright Beasley Bees Board the Bus with a Book to Read. ``Our only advantage is that our kids can read and write. Our kids will become lawyers and doctors and technicians. Some of these other guys will be out there on the playground doing their hook shots and 360s and double pumps between the legs when they`re 40 years old.``

``You cannot go anywhere unless you have an education,`` said Green, perhaps the only coach in the city who first gives out reading scores when asked about the quality of his players. ``You could have a freak injury stepping off the curb and hit your knee and the career you dreamed of will be over.``

There are coaches, of course, who say similar things all the time. When in doubt, when pressured, they invoke the term student-athlete as if it were a sprinkling of holy water. As long as the term is used, how can anyone possibly criticize their basketball program?

But at Beasley, the lip service has truly turned into the gospel. Can an inner-city school come up with the right philosophy and the right attitude to produce true student-athletes? In a day and age of rampant recruiting of 7th- and 8th-grade students by high school coaches, in an atmosphere where various high school students in Chicago have become free agents, transferring from one school to another on the basis of who can promise them the most on the basketball court, is there such a thing?

Just ask Richard Harvey, the starting center for this year`s Beasley team, what he wants to be when he grows up.

``A divorce attorney.``

Ask starting small forward Delbert Howell.

``A businessman or a professional basketball player.``

Ask starting off-guard Chimu Pearson.

``A hydraulic engineer.``

Ask starting point guard Isaac Thomas.

``Own my own business.``

Ask starting power forward Kerry Williams.

``An engineer.``

And on and on it goes. Of the 14 members of the team who practiced recently, two expressed some interest in playing basketball professionally. As for reading scores, it goes without saying that the team average, even without taking the exam yet this year, is well above the 8th-grade level.

According to Green, 100 percent of the players he has coached have graduated from high school, a figure that has all the more meaning when you consider that many of them go to the finest academic schools in the city. Green also estimates that as many as 90 percent of his former players have gone on to college.